Designing a nice website is a great start, but how do you promote that website to potential customers correctly?
You build a Marketing Funnel.
Customers don’t purchase immediately the same way businesses don’t outsource immediately. These actions occur in stages because people tend to invest their money when they trust their source.
Funnel Marketing has been perfected with the rise of Digital Marketing. Digital Marketing is growing quickly, as results are scalable and analytics are precise. This takes many of the fears and questions out of traditional marketing efforts.
Take a billboard, for instance – you know people will see them, but how many? Are they the right kind of people you’re targeting? Is it actually contributing to any real sales? Digital Marketing gives you the peace of mind of knowing where you’re investing your money. There are many tools that track website traffic and sales to help you understand where your customers are coming from and what you can do to improve your existing efforts.
Funnel Marketing allows you to:
- Find your potential customers and get their attention
- Entice them with content to gain their trust
- Drive sales and establish repeat customers for maximum profits
Here’s everything you need to know!
Lead Generation
The first stage consists of finding quality streams of traffic and driving them to your website.
Once you have a nice website, it’s time to generate and leverage traffic. There are numerous ways to attract attention and drive traffic to your website because there are many ways people find new websites. The trick is finding and generating quality prospects in an efficient manner.
Organic Search
If your website features great design and fluid navigation, it must also attract and retain site visitors who will hopefully convert. Organic search initiatives involve on and off-page strategies to favor increased metrics such as leads, conversions, and revenues. To accomplish these objectives, the site must be made highly ‘visible’ to individuals who are searching the internet for a given website’s goods and/or services.
That means quality or relevant traffic (those seeking what you sell/do) must see your site listed on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in response to inputting their search term(s). Selecting site-appropriate, high volume keywords are part of this initiative. (More on the role keywords play in organic search next.) The goal is to rank on the first or second SERPs to increase site traffic. Paid Search is another way to make your website visible on search engines. (Paid Ads will also be discussed in detail later in this document.)
Some of the strategies utilized to boost organic search metrics are link-building, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), optimized titles and metas, Calls to Action (CTAs), and keyword-enriched page content of interest to readers that features internal links.
Keyword Strategy and Optimization
Keywords are the terms that are input when we perform searches on Search Engines like Google and Bing. Every optimized website will have pages with titles and metas that are dedicated to one or more keyword. The purpose is to drive traffic to that specific page(s). Once there, appropriate optimization strategies are likely to influence visitor/readers to convert. Keeping keywords current is of inestimable value to every online business as these influence site visits as well as sales. While achieving high rankings is still desirable, keywords are not the only players when attracting site traffic. Blogs, paid ads, and custom links will also attract prospects to a website.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic can be acquired through various sources like social media posts, news articles, and blogs. Referral clicks are usually comprised of visitors who click to your website from someone else’s, rather than searching for yours directly.
Public Relations
Public Relations strategies allow brands to leverage publications and other content outlets. In exchange for valuable information, publishers mention the source, which increases credibility and overall exposure. It comes down to appealing to the audience of the publisher and not appearing to be self-serving.
Link Building
Link building strategies are where organic search and public relations come together. By collecting valuable backlinks from reputable sources, websites benefit from:
- A search rankings boost, as backlinks from trusted sites appear credible in Google’s Algorithm
- Increased brand exposure
- Streams of quality referral traffic
Brands accomplish this by researching press outlets, blogs, and other relevant locations where you can place your brand in front of potential traffic sources. This is a long-term investment that is rewarded overtime.
Free Digital Marketing Analysis
Lead Nurturing
The second stage consists of supplying your newly acquired streams of traffic with content to keep them engaged with your brand. This is where brands look to build credibility and establish trust.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a great way to leverage website traffic and turn browsers into repeat visitors. Promoting blog, infographics, case studies, and other forms of content help entertain and inform prospects about your brand. This builds trust among prospects, which establishes brand loyalty.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is where content marketing and public relations meet. Social Media has become part of modern culture. Facebook alone reported its 2 billionth user in 2017, which speaks volume about its popularity.
Companies utilize social media to:
- Share news about their brand
- Increase engagement and increase brand exposure
- Distribute content to drive website traffic and establish brand loyalty
- Increase sales
Email Marketing
Encouraging visitors to subscribe to your newsletter helps prospects familiarize themselves with your brand and content. Over time that familiarity can be used to develop trust. Sending reminders, content pieces and promotions are great for driving website traffic and creating loyal customers.
Establishing trust strengthens your brand and that can be leveraged to increase sales. Consumers are far more likely to respond to an enticing promotion when they’re familiar with and especially have a positive impression of a brand. This is why building your brand goes hand-and-hand with building your audience.
Driving Sales
The final stage of our funnel consists of converting website browsers into buyers.
Paid Search/PPC
While Paid Ads have validity for every online enterprise, newer contenders, niche businesses, or highly competitive ones will likely gain the most benefit from a Pay-Per-Click campaign. If you’ve noticed the ads at the top of most SERPs, those are PPC ads. They serve to influence link click-throughs to arrive at a given URL promoting a need/service/product as detailed in the ad. Each click-through is considered a conversion. Once on a website, however, organic initiatives take over to influence site visitors to ‘pull the trigger” and buy.
PPC campaign costs vary as the charge per bid, i.e. the cost-per-click, is determined by the popularity of the keyword used. While many new businesses establish themselves via a PPC campaign, the campaign must be managed daily to avoid the campaign expenses running over established budgets.
Social Media Advertising
Utilizing popular social media platforms for advertising has become prevalent in the world of digital marketing. Ads can range from growing your social media pages, driving inbound traffic, increasing sales, and so much more. We gave some tips on doing this effectively last year.
Depending on your goal, social media advertising can be used for lead generation, nurturing and sales. It all depends on your intended goals.
Conclusion (Coming Together)
Digital Marketing works like a funnel.
- A certain amount of people discover your business. This could be by finding your website on a search engine, seeing a social media ad, seeing your business in the news, and so much more.
- Out of all of these people who have seen your business, only a percentage of them will visit your website.
- Then an even smaller percentage of people will engage with your content and become repeat visitors. This is when people move down the funnel and start to subscribe to newsletters and follow social media pages.
- Out of that small percentage, an even smaller percentage of these website visitors will become customers.
This is why it’s so important for marketing channels to work together. Large streams of traffic often result in a small percentage of sales, so it’s important to always have more streams of traffic to ensure prospects are moving down the funnel and becoming customers.
Considering some of these Marketing Strategies for your business? The experts at Active Web Group have been in business for over 20 years and have serviced businesses of all sizes and industries. With proven expertise in Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Design, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Digital Brand Management, and Content Development and more, we’re sure to have the tools to help you succeed. Contact us for a free quote. Can’t wait? Give us a call at (800) 978-3417 today!
